Star Strategies

In Guided Reading, we are working to be able to read on our own more without help. We have recently started talking about strategies that "star" readers use. We know that a strategy is "a plan to understand," or something that just helps us know how to do something. We also know that star readers are always thinking and always asking questions. We have 5 main strategies we are using to help us figure out words we don't know. Each student has a star that he/she uses to help remember our strategies while reading individually. This is what our stars look like:
The 5 strategies are on each of the 5 points of the star:
1: Look for chunks we already know.
2: Get your mouth ready. (Sound it out.)
3: Does it look like a word I know?
4: Try again! (Go back and try to sound the word out again.)
5: Look at the picture. (Sometimes you can figure out what the word is by looking at the picture.)

When a child has tried all 5 strategies and still can't figure out the word, then he/she can turn the star over to the back. On the back are pieces of reusable highlighter tape. The tape can be put on the word in the book for reference in our group, and the student continues reading. When we come back to our group, we go through and find words we couldn't figure out by looking for the highlighter tape in our books.

Using these stars is really helping the kids be more responsible for their own reading, instead of asking, "What is this word?" whenever they get stuck.

~Sarah